


time & space

by hopipp (fancy2na)



Series: heartstrings [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Epilogue, Experimental Style, First Kiss, M/M, One Shot, Raftel, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-12 22:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21483661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancy2na/pseuds/hopipp
Summary: history repeats in ellipses(law kisses luffy at raftel)a sort-of epilogue to heartstrings which can also stand alone
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Series: heartstrings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569184
Comments: 9
Kudos: 242





	time & space

**Author's Note:**

> its practically 2020 and i still love trafalgar d water law whaddup
> 
> people have been asking me to write a luffy/law raftel kiss epilogue scene for heartstrings for literal years... so I wrote this a while ago and kept it in my drafts because I hated it but you know what? as a writer I've come to realize I'll never be completely satisfied with anything I write.
> 
> so here just take it! its very experimental. and short. cheesy as hell. gave me a good break from writing my dissertation! you dont even need to read heartstrings first-- it stands by itself. nonetheless, I hope I don't disappoint.

**I only ever thought there were two types of love:**

**the kind you would kill for**

**and the kind you would die for**

**but you, my darling**

**you were the kind of love**

**i would live for**

**-** ** o. g. k.**

\- 

history repeats.

they are atop the legendary mountain, at its peak. an allusion to the day they'd first established their mutuality. he is standing there across, shining like the sun, a beacon.

before, law thought himself a mere moth to his flame. a dimly lit star in his quintessential solar system. but he has come to understand that they are opposites in all the ways they are kindred. it's cosmic duality. 

law is a moon. orbiting around him, cold, hard, and shadowed where he is warmth, softness, light. 

he is stillness, calmness, death to luffy's velocity. his energy and his life.

they are water and fire,

space and time.

_you,_ law thinks, and hazards a step closer, fearless of the burn because he’s already been blinded-- not caught in but returned to his gravity.

time is not linear. not quite circular, but elliptical. it resets, resets, resets at a very specific apogee.

and while he is no expert at time, law can maneuver the molecules of space. he's always taken up 191cm of it. has displaced it, gambled with it. like a trick with none of the joy magic brings. 

yet the space out of his reach has always been that between him and the one with the straw hat.

_no more._

law thrusts his hand into the flames. it scorches, further mars his traumatized fingers which have already felt pain, and ink, and disease.

but they've also felt luffy’s resting between them.

now, they take him by the chin. 

if law is space then luffy must be time. timeless. for he tells it as he pleases, decides how it will be spent.

he who resets the cycle, appoints zenith and begins anew. the lord of it. the _king._

it is a will beyond the both of them. 

the world is in their hands.

_like that stormy day at sea,_

_where he lay with his insides on the outside_

_upon an operating table_

_appearing human as the rest of us, _

_because the mechanics of his insides are no more or less _

_mechanical_

_the heaving lungs, there_

_the beating heart, there_

_the gaping hole in his abdomen,_

_also there._

_law's forceps poise at the ready._

careful, yet sure of himself, law gathers his salvation and he kisses him. inevitably. he kisses him.

no, he does not get scorched to cinders-- hellfire does not rise up and smite him for his audacity at committing such a defiance. it is instead redemption, sanctification.

indeed, he was fated to be here. the phoenix to his dragon.

history repeats 

(he is not saved, but reborn in his own ashes)

in his surprise, luffy drops the treasure he's journeyed so long in search of, the one that pirates young and old, near and far, have scourged the seas to seek. the dragon having returned to its trove.

it is a legendary, opulent thing, but law has no awe for that which glitters (gold as joker's empty throne, as the pistol he aimed at cora-san's head, as law's own irises piercing him through the mirror)

his thumb runs down luffy's jawline.

it is already in his grasp.

the fox-haired navigator swoops in to catch the one piece before it falls, with reflexes likewise cat-like, but law does not hear the collective exhale of relief the rest of the strawhat and heart pirates let out, admonishing him. shaking their heads albeit fondly.

this particular phenomenon is one of the more frequent happenings of history. 

luffy responds to the kiss in earnest, passes a breath larger than life into law's mouth, through his throat-- nasopharynx, oropharynx, laryngopharynx-- down until it fills him up, space displaced. but for all that luffy is an unstoppable force his body _bends. _he is pliant, rubbery. continuous. unending.

he wraps around law as if law is not a walking white disease. not a time bomb holding the clock's hand back, nor a pirate with 500,000,000 hanging over his head. 

he wraps around law as if he is his missing half, as to become one. 

he knows now he is yin indeed.

he gives luffy his heart. he would open a room and place it right into luffy's hands if he asked. lay himself cut open on the operating table and tell luffy to take all he likes and bury or burn the rest.

law gives him his heart and everything that has mottled and molded it. the childhood trauma and the crippling depression. the mastery of his own abilities, the _anger__, _ the ceaseless adoration for a smiling black-feathered man long passed on. even the withered wisps of memories, of two doctors with laugh lines, an ailing young girl never without pigtails or a smile stretching her face.

_his grip on kikoku,_

_eyes never straying from the admiral incinerating the battlefield _

_"torao, stop that."_

_"stop what?" _

_"thinking."_

_law has seen and done too many a horror for such a suggestion_

_but so has luffy._

_he huffs, "torao!"_

_dodges a plume of magma._

_"what should I do instead, then?" _

_"focus on me. do what I do."_

_and law tries. he does._

_acts upon instinct only, _

_narrows his vision to a tunnel with luffy at its end _

_(except it doesn't)_

_it is blind trust,_

_the first instance law realizes he is still capable of_

_and somehow it works_

_the man who burned the hole through luffy's ribs,_

_through both of their souls, _

_instead burns himself away_

_yes, luffy's plans all end like this _

_nonsensical, impossible,_

_brilliant victory_

_history repeats, does it not? _

luffy nips his bottom lip as they kiss, intentionality unknown and irrelevant. law mirrors the gesture, stretches his bottom lip out far enough it would rip off another with a lesser devil fruit ability.

law's hand is in his hair, the rough edges of a tattered hat tickling blackened and whitened knuckles. 

luffy giggles against his mouth and places it instead upon law's head. his crown of straw, shared.

they aren’t the most eloquent pair, no need for cathartic confessions or emboldened declarations between them. their actions speak.

and embracing there on that peak, one piece discarded, their wills impending, larger than even the both of them, 

catcalls resounding in the air from their crews and all, 

law finally accepts it.

history repeats 

and it's quite alright.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for posting this like 4 years late, im still active on the blue hellsite at @gay-pirate-anime and @hopipp if u wanna vibe w me
> 
> also got a twitter @sugawara_kush although there isnt much op there these days


End file.
